1930s HMS Tamar - Receiving Ship

I read somewhere that the main doors to St John's Cathedral were made of wood from the ship after the war to replace the ones damaged by the Japanese.

These stories all mumble about because of various muddles. One is over the material the Tamar was built from - she was riveted iron, so had timber only for deck planking in interior furniture (bulkheads, doors, etc.) so, whence the doors? Another  with respect to the door is how the timber for it was 'rescued' from a wreck that had spent 6 years submerged in muddy, sewagey, fuel slicked Victoria Harbour, and that had to be salvaged by a private contractor in around 6 months flat mid-1947-31.12.1947, some of which salvage he did by explosive demolition. Perhaps the most common muddle is over which Tamar - the mast came from the 1960s Tamar, not the ship (as a ten second comparison of photos would indicate); the anchor at the HKMCD is probably a gunboat leftover hanging around the dockyard stores when the dockyard shut up shop in 1959 - it is far too small for one of the base depot ship Tamar's (again a thoughtful photo inspection would provide the answer); the doors again (only hearsay anyway - no record of any such gift in either the restoration donations lists or in any news story about the restoration programme - the only "Tamar" gift was organized by my father, of a newly made, carved teak altar made by the chippies (from who knows what wood) and given by Holy Trinity (the Dockyard) Church, in the old Wellington Barracks of which he was 'vicar' as Senior Chaplain to the British Pacific Fleet.)

Stephen D 

Some interesting details and findings http://www.wd2.gov.hk/document/Final_PAIA_Report.pdf

I've traced that bogus 'historical' detail back to an SCMP summary made about the Tamar when the news broke in 1912 that she was to be replaced by the Triumph. It was wrong then and is wrong now - the confusion was over the first visit (actually 1865) and the date of installation of the new main dockyard gates. 

I've recently found a photo of the Triumph, in white and buff funnel livery and flying the Commodore HK's broad pendant that corroborates the documentary evidence that, briefly, Triumph did take over as base depot ship from c.March 1914 to July 1914. However, whilst a bit vague, the evidence also suggests that Tamar stayed in commission as a receiving ship (the Navy List implies she was briefly out of commission at the begining of 1914, the logbooks disagree!), until she resumed her role as base depot ship at the outset of mobilization for WW1. So claims that she was the base depot ship continuously October 1897 (actually March 1898, which was when the Commodore transferred his flag from the Victor Emmanuel) through until final decommissioning in 1997 are wrong. Briefly in 1914 the HK Royal Naval base became HMS Triumph.

And then there are those curious entities of the late 1920s and early 1930s, HM Ships Tamar II and Tamar III, each commissioned in its own right, the first as the base depot ship of the 8th Destroyer Flotilla, the second as the embryo HMS Terror (the new Singapore Naval Base) that was actually located in Singapore for a month or two (flying its commissioning pendant in a so far unidentified motor launch (ditto the Tamar II)) in the mid-1930s before a brief name change to HMS Terror II as the real HMS Terror, an old WW1 monitor, made her way out as the new base depot ship and gunnery training and gunfire support ship, disappearing when the real Terror arrived! 

The most fun bit of 'did I need to know that' will also appear in my history of the ship to be published later this year. It is that, as far as the leading RN figurehead expert and I can work out, the Tamar was unique amongst RN ships in having a sex change mid-career. The ship started out male in 1863 and ended female in 1941. Since the old male figurehead evidently survived (now heavily (and rather misleadingly) restored, it is on display in Plymouth UK's new The Box museum, whence it arrived from over a century in the Devonport Naval Base Museum and its antecedents), the puzzle is why on earth the change occurred (I advance some theories). That it did occur in 1884 is fully documented with the replacement graphically described and subsequently photographed through until 1887 - am eagerly looking out for any hi-res subsequent images. That's because what is not documented is why, where and when, between the female's first 1884-1887 incarnation with a raised left arm brandishing a spear and her final attested appearance in HK, as shown in a well-known HK Museum of History photo, she underwent something like a complete left arm disarticulation.

Best,

StephenD